Hugh Pepper wrote on Feb. 16: “that every country in the world agreed in Paris to take actions required to lower CO2 emissions and eventually decarbonize our economies.” Bravo! While I agree that we must protect our environment, Mr. Pepper and every other socialist environmentalist misses the most important points.
First, only 132 of the 195 countries who signed the accord have ratified it. Of those who ratified the agreement, what guarantee do we have that they, or any country, will actually carry out its commitment? The targets provided by each participating country are not binding as part of any international law, so where’s the guarantee of compliance?
Secondly, the worst polluters in the world, including China, the US, parts of the EU, India and Russia may have all signed the Paris Accord, then celebrated each other and returned home to business as usual. Cases in point, the US, under its new president, made a commitment to ignore the accord. China cut its internal coal production, but at the same time increased its coal imports from countries like North Korea and Australia by some 22 million metric tons in 2016, while at the same time continues its plans to build coal fired power plants.
Turn on your computer or any international TV news channel today and witness the blinding smog and pollution in cities like Beijing, Xingtai or Hengshui in China, Calcutta or Allahaba in India, Iran’s Zabol or Mexico City. Canada’s cities, even those industrialized like Hamilton or the Edmonton/Ft. Saskatchewan corridor with its refineries, have an extremely clean, emission and smog free environment thanks mainly to those industries themselves that continue to do a remarkable job at policing and controlling their own emissions!
The important point that was completely ignored during the Paris Accord discussions was “how will the world monitor compliance?” Like the establishment of the IAEA inspection program developed to monitor nuclear proliferation, to my knowledge, there is no such program to monitor Paris Accord environmental compliance?
So here we are again; little, smog free, low emission emitting Canada, with 36 million people being forced to accept cap and trade and carbon tax programs that will do nothing to reduce emissions, while at the same time cost our citizens hundreds of dollars annually in government sponsored theft. Once again the world is laughing at our government’s duplicity and our citizen’s naďve stupidity!
Lloyd Leugner
